


sleep all summer

by temerity (forsanethaec)



Category: One Direction (Band)
Genre: M/M, Tour Fic, beach feelings
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-07-07
Updated: 2014-07-07
Packaged: 2018-02-07 21:53:50
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,107
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1915197
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/forsanethaec/pseuds/temerity
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Sometimes Niall  wants Louis to feel this thing that’s been building in him for months now the way he does – feel it like it’s real, and more than temporary. Niall feels it enough to say that Louis is his best friend and mean it and still find himself alone on a beach at five in the morning thinking how he wishes it was something else. (A WWA tour snapshot.)</p>
            </blockquote>





	sleep all summer

**Author's Note:**

> I NEED TO START WRITING FIC AGAIN, HERE, LET ME THROW THIS AT YOU. this is not the first time i've had to use the tag #beach feelings, which should surprise approximately nobody. also i completely invented this beach and also everything else about everything, sry portugal?? title is the st vincent/the national song.

They get to the venue in Portugal early the morning before the show, so early it’s still the middle of the night. Everyone but Niall seems to have slept most of the ride and they stay sleeping when the bus parks and shudders off in the shadow of the stadium. They’re not going anywhere until at least sunrise, which isn’t for a couple of hours. 

Niall’s restless in his bunk. His knee hurts a bit – more than a bit, actually, but he’s trying to be a hero – and he thinks about just waking Louis up for a cup of tea, but he’s feeling cramped and weirdly rebellious and there’s a more interesting option to take: a street he’d seen on the way in, dead-ending in what looked like a locals’ beach that had been all but deserted under a streetlight’s singular glow. 

Niall leaves his wallet behind and sticks his phone in the pocket of his hoodie and slips out of the bus at half past four a.m., snagging the spare door key as he goes. They’ve done a good job with crowd control here; there aren’t any fans loitering around as he sets off into the neighborhood with his hood up and his head down. It’s a weekday night, so the post-club crowds are sparser than they would be otherwise, and he doesn’t have to look at anyone or brush too close in the few blocks it takes him to find what he’s looking for. 

The beach at the end of the one-way street he’d seen is big and lonesome and not too pristine. It’s dotted with a few other people who seem to have the same idea he does, or else they’re homeless. It’s right for what he’s after, though, which is space both to clear his clouded head and wallow in the cloudiness a little longer. 

His knee is aching from the walk from the bus when he settles down in the sand, close to the tideline. He kneads at the space around his scar through his joggers, feeling blood pulse beneath his skin, looking out at the ocean. The sky is black and starless and he can just make out where it meets the horizon, where the dark changes color almost imperceptibly, takes a liquid form and starts to move. 

After a while just listening to the hush of the tide rolling in and out, he takes out his phone and sends a text and puts it away again and listens some more, digging his fingers into the sand. The minutes tick past, and people come and go on the beach and it stays about as sparsely populated. No one comes up to bother Niall. 

Niall spends so much of his time insisting with himself that he not feel this way, but right now he can’t keep that guard up: He’s tired of being tired and of feeling broken. He wants to run and jump like he used to, wants to be able to get hit with stupid shit fans throw on stage and not have to care. He doesn’t want to consider that some of his new limitations might be forever.

And he likes that the boys have been there for him through all of it – that Harry helps him up the ramp – that Louis is always, always there, holding out his arm, spotting, watching Niall in the periphery and making sure that he’s okay. He likes the attention and likes being cared for. 

It’s just he wishes Louis would pay him that attention anyway. It sucks, having it and still feeling like it’s artificial somehow. Helping Niall get around seems like an easy way for Louis to show his affection, and sometimes Niall wishes he’d show it in the harder ways, too. 

Sometimes he wants Louis to feel this thing that’s been building in him for months now the way he does – feel it like it’s real, and more than temporary. Niall feels it enough to say that Louis is his best friend and mean it and still find himself alone on a beach at five in the morning thinking how he wishes it was something else. 

“A little young to be out on your own so late, aren’t you, lad?”

Niall looks up from under his hood, smiling already. Louis is standing there, a beanie pulled down low on his forehead even though the night is warm, his hands in his pockets. Niall had texted him. Of course he had, because Niall is in a self-sabotaging kind of mood. 

“Are you a policeman?” he asks. Louis shakes his head gravely. “Good, then. Have a seat if you like.”

Louis sets down beside him in the sand, huffing out a sigh. 

“So,” he says. 

Niall tips his head sideways to look at him. “I didn’t know if you’d be up or not,” he says. “Figured I’d try you.”

“Not like you, this sneaking off,” Louis says lightly. 

“I learned from the best.”

“Yeah.” Louis smiles a little. “Didn’t mean to set such a bad example.” 

“What can I say,” Niall says, shrugging and looking back out at the sea. “I’m impressionable.” 

They listen to the tide for a while, a lone gull calling. Niall counts six waves: in, out, in, out. 

“You alright, then?” Louis asks.

If you can’t tell your best mate the truth at five in the morning, Niall thinks, no matter how you feel about him, then you’ll never be able to tell it to anyone at all.

“Not exactly,” he says, then thinks about it a bit, treading carefully. “I don’t know. Knee was keeping me up, and I.” He tries to find the words. The sea air and the late hour and the sound of the ocean are making him feel half-asleep as he sits here with Louis, like he might be dreaming. 

“I’ve just been thinking about – about you, and how I just don’t…” He bites his lip. “I just don’t want this to go away, like, when I’m all better or when tour’s over again or, or, like, ever.” The words rush to get past each other and out of the sudden tightness of his throat. “You know? I mean. It’s been – really good, getting to – I don’t know. To have you as, like, my person. And… I just wanted to say that I hope… like, you’ll stay. That we’ll stay like we are.” 

It’s actually really fucking scary to say it like this, improvised and unscheduled and hardly even how Niall had realized he was feeling. He’s never let himself put it into words, that nameless thing that sits and beats its wings in his chest whenever he’s with Louis. He’s known that it is heavy, and that it has been growing for much longer than Louis has spent giving him much focus at all. 

But Niall hadn’t realized that this is what it’s turned into, now that he’s so much more often the first person Louis turns to when he wants to share a laugh, now that Louis is the first up to give him a hand when he needs one. 

Louis doesn't say anything for a long moment after Niall finishes rambling, and when he finally speaks it sounds like he’s chosen one question out of several. “Like we are?” 

Niall sighs and looks over at him. He’s called Louis down here at five in the morning to have this conversation on a whim; he might as well keep being something close to honest. “Yeah,” he says. “I know this is weird, I don’t know why I’m, like – I just.”

“Yeah,” Louis says quietly. 

“I just really like this,” Niall’s voice cracks into a whisper. He wants to tell Louis that he likes it more than he’s ever liked such a thing with anyone, that he feels like this isn’t really the same, somehow. He wants to take Louis' hand on the beach between them and kiss him while the tide rolls in, but he doesn’t. 

“Did I, like – is this coming from somewhere?” Louis asks.

“Not really,” Niall says truthfully. “Just been thinking about it a lot. And I couldn’t sleep, so I came down here, ‘cause I’d seen it, and… I just wanted you with me, is all.”

Louis’ smile comes off slanted, a little sad. “I’m not going anywhere,” he says. “Unless you know something I don’t. Are they planning to separate us? Are our powers combined too much for the world to handle?”

Niall laughs.

“They couldn’t do it anyway,” Louis murmurs, tipping his shoulder into Niall’s and leaving it there for a second, his body warm and close. The moment’s not devoid of tension, but Niall’s used to that by now. “You’re stuck with me, kid.” 

“I’m glad,” Niall murmurs, more for the sea than Louis’ ears. He’s only told him half the truth, of course, because he doesn’t expressly want to stay just like they are. He wants what they are, and then just a bit more. 

Louis leans his head on Niall’s shoulder and Niall feels sad and wistful and down on himself, and lucky, too, and peaceful and tired and all the things one goes to the beach at five in the morning to feel, like he’s fulfilling some self-created literary stereotype that’s also his real life. These are the moments when it feels utterly stupid _not_ to be kissing Louis, when he’s got all the romance and the scenery and the perfect set-up for it. Niall’s lived with this long enough to feel like if it was meant to have happened, it would have already, but it doesn’t stop him from thinking about it all the time. 

After a while he puts his arm around Louis’ shoulders and they sit close, half-asleep on each other, so that by the time Louis murmurs, “The sun’s coming up,” Niall’s in a kind of trance. 

He turns to look at Louis and Louis looks up at him, so close their noses almost brush. Niall glances at his mouth, and then he says, like it’s coming from somewhere outside of him, “Can I try something?”

“Okay.” Louis’ voice comes out a rasp. He’s taken hold of the hem of Niall’s hoodie between them at some point, fingers twisting aimlessly into the fabric. 

Niall comes back to himself long enough to push down the wild beating of his heart, just for the span of one wave, in, out. Then he leans in to kiss Louis. 

Louis lets it happen, lips falling open beneath Niall’s just enough that Niall tastes the salt on them, the sea breeze and the late night. He lifts his hand to Niall’s jaw just before they break apart, touching him lightly, the gentle pressure of his fingers keeping Niall close as his skin heats up.

“Is that what you meant?” Louis asks. The demanding note in his voice is wonderfully out of place. It’s so typical of Louis to push, to not care if he’s being incongruous, and Niall’s thinking about how much he loves that as he processes what he’s just done. He licks his lower lip and tastes Louis’ mouth there. His arm is still around Louis’ shoulders, and he pinches the fabric of his sweater between his fingers. 

“I guess so?” Niall asks it like it’s something Louis could confirm for him.

“No, Niall, you have to know for sure.” Louis’ fingers press in against the hinge of Niall’s jaw, then slide around the back of his neck inside his hood, still up, flattening his already pillow-flattened hair. “You can’t, like, bring me out to the beach at sunrise and make that speech like you’ve just done and, and kiss me, and not know what you mean by all of it,” he says, softer. Niall notices the fear in his face then, for the first time.

“I meant – I just –" Niall shivers, and says, "I just wanna keep you. And I want -- I do, I want it to be like that.”

“Like that,” Louis breathes. There’s a glow on his face; the sun is cresting on the horizon, one burning sliver of orange in the center of the lightening sky. 

“Could that be okay?”

Louis kisses him again in answer, all close and solid and intent, making certain for both of them. Niall loses himself in it, floating on the kiss like it’s a river, feeling himself get carried away and finding for the first time that he isn’t afraid of not coming back. 

“I think so,” Louis is saying into his mouth, over and over again between kisses. “It could be, Niall. I think it could be okay.”

**Author's Note:**

> find me on tumblr @[1dgaf](http://1dgaf.tumblr.com/), because this is a thing i should start putting here!


End file.
